United
by Alexandyne
Summary: After "Angel", Fang discovers the lab has been keeping more from him than a normal life. He has a sister, a twin. After fighting to meet her and get to know her, she sacrifices herself to save the others and he's thrown into a stupor... But is she still alive?
1. Memories Lost

****Prologue:****

* * *

><p>Alix staggered through the woods. Her hair was a mess, blood stained her shirt, and her memories were fluttering around her head. She couldn't quite remember just who she was. She just remembered faces.<p>

She remembered a strong face, with warm eyes and dark blonde hair, a twinkle to his eyes... and in an instant, he was gone.

She remembered a tan, grim faced boy, with dark hair and dark eyes. Then he was gone, too.

She knew, somehow, she had to find them. She remembered the dark haired boy... She remembered his voice. She paused and collapsed to her knees. She lifted the hem of her shirt, and stared at the sloppily stitched gash down her stomach.

She had been dead. She had been... hadn't she? The cut was from an autopsy report, or... she shuddered. Dissection? She bit her lip for a moment, then pushed her shirt down. Blood was trickling down from the cut and soaking into her shirt. Her shoulders shook, and she pushed her hands into her stomach. They came away bloody. She leaned back against a nearby tree, and felt something most queer on her back. She reached behind her and touched feathers.

__Wings. That's right. I have wings. Why do I have wings? Who am I?__ She thought. After a moment, she had a new thought... __What am I?__

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><p><strong><strong>Alright my lovelies! So, I was flipping through my old stories and basically I found this one. It was so old that it made me cry inside, I was like twelve or thirteen or something when I wrote Shadow's Revenge. But, I really liked the idea and because I am going around and reviving some of my old stories, I figured I'd give this a go.<strong>**

****What this is BASICALLY supposed to be is a sequel of Shadow's Revenge. But, you really don't need to read that one. Again, I was in like... middle school when I wrote that. That was years ago. Oh lawd. Don't read it, please, or if you do just don't judge me by it.****

****So it's still going to be a sequel, as it was when I started this story however long ago now, but instead of making you read it I'm going to do a big summary thing so just stay with me and pretend it's the first one in a series and it's just super suspenseful and you don't know who Alix is. Yeah? That work?****


	2. A Summary of a Life Lost

Of course, no one knew who Alix was. Even Alix didn't know who Alix was, but she was still there. Only eleven people knew that she existed, outside of the labs anyway, and no one would have believed those eleven people anyway. The story they told was much too insane, far too bizarre, far too unlikely to be true.

But it was true none the less.

Two years ago, when the oldest of them had been fifteen, Angel was taken away from them in an explosion. They never did find Angel's body, but that was because she wasn't dead. Fang left because he decided it hurt too much to be around Max while knowing he had lost her, so he went with his new friends to New York. After weeks without finding Angel, he finally caved and called Max.

"Don't hang up," he had begged, and she had hesitated on the other line to see what he had to say. He suggested that they break into the lab in New York, which was just where they had left it. He hoped that there would be information about Angel's locations in that lab, and there was. But there was also something else...

They found Fang's file, and under the section labeled relatives, he found not only the names of his birth parents, but he discovered he had a twin sister. He had been in shock, and after they rescued Angel it took him months to find where she was supposed to live.

The search for Fang's sister wasn't stress-free, though. The entire flock was on their last nerves after searching high and low for this girl, and finally Dylan and Max snapped and had a huge argument. Dylan left for a little while to get his head clear, and Nudge and Iggy went with him, just so that way he wouldn't be alone.

Nudge insisted that they enroll in school, and the boys agreed even though neither of them really wanted to be there. Dylan's distaste for school was confirmed in the first thirty seconds, when he ran smack into a girl while trying to walk through the door, and she ended up being furious with him. As much as he tried to put the girl out of his mind, he kept seeing her in all of his classes and she was definitely odd. She was tough, but she was very pretty and he wasn't the only guy that kept looking over at her.

She didn't really notice, though. She had medium length black hair and eyes that couldn't quite pick a color, and he couldn't decide if they were violet, blue, silver or something else entirely. She was small, too, no more than five feet tall although he doubted that and she couldn't have weighed more than a hundred pounds at the maximum. All in all, she was so small that he decided her bark must be worse than her bite. Her name was Alix.

The evening of the first day Dylan, Iggy and Nudge had enrolled in school, insane events began to transpire.

Alix lived alone, without her parents and she had no siblings, in a cabin in the woods. She wasn't normal, that much was certain, but she wasn't like the others; she didn't have wings or any powers aside from one: she could talk to animals. Of course, no one knew about that except for her and she liked it that way, but it did mean she had lots of animals with her once she was in those woods.

That evening, though, when she returned to her cabin with her wolf and her falcon by her side, there was some others already inside her cabin, waiting for her. She didn't know them, but they were mostly around her age and their names were Max, Fang, Gazzy and Angel, and the four of them were NOT expecting anyone to be returning to that cabin. They had hoped it was abandoned, and it would buy them a few days to look for Fang's missing sister.

Angel was the first of the four to determine who Alix was, and she cut directly to the chase by getting inside Alix's head and talking with her. Alix was far too shocked to absorb anything the little girl was telling her, but Fang and Max caught on quickly: Alix was Fang's missing twin.

The key piece of evidence was that the man who had helped Alix survive for these many years was named Jeb, who signed all her documents when she needed an adult signature and gave her food, although he never stayed around much.

Meanwhile, Dylan, Iggy and Nudge were looking for a place to stay and thus began looking in the woods. While flying, Dylan noticed that all the animals in the woods seemed to be missing except for one spot, around a cabin. He saw Alix, Fang, Max and the others talking, so he walked up to the door to see what was going on.

Alix saw him and had just enough time to yell at him before the windows were broken in and Erasers attacked... So much for those being exterminated!

Alix was completely untrained and taken down in a matter of seconds with a dart, and then she disappeared. The others defeated the Erasers and remained free, but Alix was already gone. When she woke up, she was in a dog cage twelve feet off the ground in a room filled with mutants that she didn't know, and she was completely alone.

They ran a few tests on her, hurt her, and she knew she had to get out of there, it was her only chance. The only question was: how?

One of the scientists answered that question for her, luckily enough, and let slip that she didn't actually have only one power, but rather two: not only could she speak to animals, but she could take their shape. She just hadn't figured out how yet. So when they returned her to the room after her tests, she spoke with another mutant named Aqua.

Aqua wanted out horribly, and she had lost her memory completely and desperately wanted a memory of a place beyond the lab.

They came up with a plan to break out, and waited until the scientists left. Another mutant named Karma pointed out a critical point that they could use to break out... the birds in the rafters. Once the scientists left that evening, Alix called one down to her and the bird gave her a feather. When she blew on the feather, it dissolved into a fine silver dust and fell all over her, turning her into a tiny bird just like the one who gave her the feather. She hopped out from between the bars and returned to her normal form, then released all the mutants from their cages.

Unfortunately, there was no way out from the lab. The doors were all bolted shut and resealed, and they had no explosives to break their way out. They would have to wait for the doors to unlock with the scientists return, but they would be ready. They used common equipment like lightbulbs, broken brooms, thumb tacks, glue and wire to set traps throughout the building and when the scientists entered, they were taken by surprise.

They escaped, and while running out of the door they ran into Fang, Max, Dylan, Nudge, Iggy, Gazzy and Angel, who had been about to break into the lab at the same time they were breaking out. Fang was determined: he had just found his twin sister, he hadn't even gotten to know her or talk with her for more than five minutes, he was going to get her back.

They ran hard and fast, trying to get as far away from that lab as they could. Three other mutants from the lab stayed with them, among them being Karma, Aqua and a new bloke named Razor. Karma and Aqua had wings, but Razor had wolverine-like claws that would slice through bone.

That did unfortunately leave Alix and Razor with no wings, so they couldn't fly away... Or could they? Max quickly came up with the idea to use Alix's shapeshifting powers with a feather from Max's wings, which would give them wings on their backs just like the other Avians. Alix was excited to learn that if she blew the silvery dust on someone aside from herself, they could change form, too, which allowed both her and Razor to fly away.

The lab was right behind them, though, so they didn't get very far. As they were flying together, somewhat awkwardly because they didn't know one another, bombs hit the earth and shook the air. Those who had been flying for a long time knew what to do, but Alix was flustered and ended up falling. Dylan dove down to catch her instructively and held her close to protect her from a second blast. They ended up hitting the ground and rolling, causing Alix to break some ribs and hit her head against the ground, almost knocking her unconscious but she managed to stay awake. What she didn't manage to do was stand up, because every time she tried her vision would fail her.

Fang flew down to help, but Dylan ignored him and picked Alix up, then flew up into the air. Fang was definitely not happy that Dylan was taking care of _Fang's _sister, not when Dylan had already messed up Fang's relationship with Max, but he didn't have any time to argue because a third explosion shook the ground, which knocked everyone sideways and the world turned dark.

When Alix woke up, she had no memory of who she was or where she was, and she couldn't see anything – she was completely blind. She was confused, and upset, and it took the others a while to realize what was wrong with her... she was blind and had amnesia. Once they determined this, a scientist came in.

"That simply won't do," the scientist had said, observing her blindness. "We'll do some tests to... ah... help you." He had then dragged her away.

That was when Alix woke up, safe in her bed at home with her mother and father and her little brother down the hall, and she realized with a shock: it had all been a dream.


	3. A Broken Heart

Now, any of you would have been able to tell Alix that it hadn't been a dream. For us on the outside looking in, it was perfectly obvious just what was going on, but for Alix, it wasn't.

The lab had not been very interested in Alix from the beginning. They had injected bird DNA into the womb of a woman to try to get a bird-like offspring, and they only saw one child in that womb. It was a large, healthy baby that took the DNA in stride, and that was the only child they saw or knew about in the womb. A smaller child had been in that womb, tucked up and away and pushed towards the mother's rib cage, so no one had known she was there at all. When Fang was born, they were very surprised to see a second child, a smaller child, a sickly child was born as well. They weren't sure what to do with her, because an opportunity for another mutant had been wasted by not pumping her full of DNA as well.

But, no matter, they were still very happy because one winged little boy had been born, and was a complete and perfect success. The girl had no wings, and for all intents and purposes she was completely normal. But in all honesty, she wasn't. The extra DNA had been floating around the womb, and parts of it were pulled into her here and there, but she didn't get the concentrated version that her brother did. Just a taste, and it didn't give her wings but they decided they couldn't just let her go, or put her in the adoption system – no, they wanted to keep an eye on her.

So once she was able to walk and talk, they put her away in a house very close to someone else they had been keeping an eye on... Doctor Martinez. The woman had provided an egg for a different experiment, Max, and so they were monitoring her ever after. They placed the little girl, Alix they called her, in the same house that the man monitoring Doctor Martinez was in. The man was Jeb.

Of course, Jeb didn't stay. When the girl was about six, he started working full time at the lab again after they determined that Dr. Martinez wasn't a threat, and then he went away with the other experiments to live in Colorado. But every now and then he would leave for work, about every month, and he would return to Alix and give her food, sign any papers that needed signing, and then leave her to her own devices with the animal friends she had made.

Now, you are probably wondering "what does any of this have to do with Alix dreaming everything that you just told us in the last chapter?", but remember... she didn't dream it.

The lab really had no uses for Alix, no desire for Alix, she was an accident, an experiment that no one wanted to write a paper on and they didn't want to keep her in the labs and pay for her food and her injections and her air conditioning. No, they wanted that for an experiment that actually mattered, but if Alix knew about them and thought they were real – no, if she thought she had a twin brother – she would come looking and meddling and they simply wanted nothing to do with her.

So they took her memories, replaced them with new ones, returned her sight and put her in a little house with a family, and they put fake memories into the staff at the school and fake memories into their neighbors about a happy family with a little girl and a little boy, who were very happy and perfectly normal, thank you very much. The staff already remembered Alix, anyway, all they had to do was give the staff memories of a happy family.

They hesitated, then, though. They had just started a newer experiment – bat hybrids. It was taking a lot of energy and resources and they did not have time for Maximum Ride and her ragtag flock, especially not dealing with them trying to break out as they knew the flock would try to do, so they decided that – why not? – give them fake memories, too. Make them forget Alix, make them forget that she exists so that they would not go looking for her or try to revive her memories.

Make them all forget.

And so they passed the duty of relocation down to an intern, to get their minds off of it. The intern was not a very bright intern, or a very clever intern or a particularly good scientist of an intern, nor was he a cold hearted intern or an inhumane intern. So he decided to give the flock happy memories of settling down – just for a little while – with Dr. Martinez, who happened to be very close to where Alix was living for obvious reasons.

And so the flock enrolled in school, and those weird memories that they had of a girl with black hair and eyes that couldn't pick a color seemed like nothing more than a dream to them, and the fantastic people with the wings and the powers were no more than a dream to Alix.

Then, there was the question about Karma, Aqua and Razor, the three mutants who Alix had escaped with. They would need new memories, too, because there wasn't much point in keeping any of them. They also decided that Alix needed fake friends if she was going to be happy in her fake life, so they made the four of them best friends and sent them to a highschool to live a perfectly normal life.

And everything else was, to all of them, a dream.

But, of course, the flock had settled down with Doctor Martinez and now they were enrolling in school. Max, Fang, Iggy and Dylan were enrolled in the very same highschool that Aqua, Karma, Razor and Alix were in, and so they were bound to bump into each other eventually.

Dylan had bumped into Alix on the first day of school in real life, and so the lab had them keep that memory. It made Alix a little angry with Dylan for not watching where he was going and he had knocked her over, so she didn't want much to do with him. But Dylan did not like people disliking him, so he made it his personal goal to become friends with her.

He walked with her to school on the first day, even though she tried to walk so fast that he couldn't keep up, and they ended up making small talk and joking. In a few weeks, Dylan found himself able to say that not only was Alix his friend, but the entire flock was friends with Alix, Razor, Karma and Aqua.

Alix took them to a high school party, a bonfire in the woods. They laughed together until Alix noticed a worn-out path through the trees, so she followed it to a cabin. The cabin had obviously been abandoned, and the windows were broken in like a fight had happened there. Alix didn't know it, but that had been her cabin, where she had lived before the lab replaced her memories. Her animals were waiting for her there, a falcon perched atop the window sill and a wolf sitting by the door, waiting.

They spoke to her in her mind, as was her gift with animals, and she was horrified. She didn't show it and quickly doubled back along the path, dragging Dylan with her. She had wanted to leave the party and go home immediately, but Dylan didn't agree. Instead, he snuck with her to Dr. Martinez's house and jumped into Dr. Martinez's car, and drove her around. They laughed and even though Dylan didn't actually have his license yet, he was remarkably good at it.

After another few weeks, Dylan realized he had a crush on Alix and asked her for a date. They dated throughout the fall, but Alix couldn't help but wonder what was wrong with Dylan, Max, Fang, Iggy, Nudge, Gazzy and Angel.

They were happy dating, though. And the rest of the flock liked her, especially Angel because Alix would tell Angel great stories about dragons and knights and angels and occasionally, a man in distress that a strong warrior woman would have to save.

Every time she was out with Dylan, weird men would show up, trying to talk with Dylan and ask Dylan questions. Alix wanted to know what was going on, but Dylan refused to tell her. In order to explain who they were, he would have to explain that he had wings and he wasn't willing to do that. No, so he kept his mouth shut.

The lab had noticed that Dylan and Alix were getting close, too close, and so they had two choices: interfere directly and end up with them both knowing anyway, or indirectly by showing Alix that Dylan had a secret. It would make Alix angry and hopefully, they would break up, and all would be well again.

It worked.

December rolled around, and Dylan came to take her out on a date when man after man appeared to talk to Dylan, and Alix couldn't take it anymore. She demanded that he tell her what was going on _right then _or she was breaking up with him. He pleaded but didn't tell her who they were or what they were doing, so she left him.

They didn't talk in school and they didn't talk on the way home or at parties, and she avoided the rest of the flock when Dylan was with them. She didn't avoid them always, because she had still made goof friends with them, but they were with Dylan a lot and so she decided that she would rather not be there too. The only two that ever really went out of their way to spend time with Alix were Angel and Fang.

Karma and Razor started dating, so they spent more time together than with Alix, leaving her and Aqua wandering around avoiding the others.

Alix felt a little bad and encouraged Aqua to go hang out with the flock regularly, because she knew that Aqua had developed a crush on Iggy and it was entirely unfair for Alix to be keeping them apart, but Aqua didn't mind so much.

"It's just a crush," Aqua would say every time Alix would bring it up, and so Alix let it rest.

When Christmas came around, there was a knock on Alix's door. When she walked outside, in the snow there were four things: a guitar, a blood red rose, a necklace and a note.

The note was unsigned, but it didn't matter, she knew who it was from. **Merry Christmas, Alix. I miss you. **She picked up the necklace and discovered that it was an amulet made out of tiny silver wings, and inside there was a picture of a white rose. She picked up the guitar and strummed a few chords, listening to the clean, pure sound bounce around the neighborhood.

Then, she turned her attention to the rose. As she watched, the red color began to melt away from it, turning from red to pink to an unblemished, perfect white. She picked it up with a smile on her face.

"I wonder how he did that," Alix murmured, examining the rose. A cool breeze stirred the snow and flakes swirled across the guitar, spelling out _Magic. Just like you._

She gently brushed her hands across the snow flakes and they melted at her touch, and with a painful jolt she remembered that dream she had had months ago, with the fire and the explosions and her falling. And then Dylan catching her, and holding her close.

A tear threatened to roll down her face, so she quickly got up. She threw the rose to the ground, but kept the guitar and the necklace and walked inside. She left the rose to die.

After a few months, spring rolled around. Alix never did break or decide to call Dylan, even though at times she really did want to. But on Valentine's Day, she was feeling romantically weak, and a country song came on the radio. Normally, she didn't do country songs, she much preferred Paramore and whatnot. But something stopped her from changing the channel.

It was _Back to December _by Taylor Swift, and the lyrics shook her so bad that she thought she would break down and cry. She didn't, of course. No, Alix was too strong for that. But tears did roll silently down her cheeks.

" Your guard is up and I know why.  
>Because the last time you saw me<br>Is still burned in the back of your mind.  
>You gave me roses and I left them there to die." <p>

She remembered throwing the white rose on the ground, not wanting to see it ever again.

"I'd go back to December, turn around and make it all right.  
>I go back to December all the time."<p>

Her mind filled with all the times she had wished she could go back an fix it, say that she had been over reacting, or just make him tell her. Anything, really. Just... just going back to that night in December when she turned away.

"When your birthday passed and I didn't call." 

She remembered sitting by the phone on his birthday, wondering if she should, or if it would just be better to let him spend his day without getting into his head.

"And I think about summer, all the beautiful times,  
>I watched you laughing from the passenger side."<p>

She remembered that summer night after the bon fire when they had drove around together, laughing.

"Realized that I loved you in the fall."

It was when they made it official: it wasn't just a date, they were really a couple then.

"And then the cold came, the dark days when fear crept into my mind  
>You gave me all your love and all I gave you was "Goodbye"."<p>

She remembered when the men started showing up, and she got worried about just what Dylan was involved in. She remembered how he had begged her not to go, said that he couldn't tell her where they were from, when he said that he loved her. She remembered turning around, only offering a farewell.

""I miss your tan skin and your sweet smile  
>So good to me, so right<br>And how you held me in your arms that September night..."

She flashed back to their first date, back in September, with the warmth of his arms and the laughter and the smiles, and how he would get one dimple in his left cheek but not one in his right, giving him a lopsided, playfully handsome sort of smile...

"I'd go back to December, turn around and change my own mind  
>I go back to December all the time.<br>All the time."

The song came to a close and she was thoroughly upset, just not sure what to do when the idea hit her. She ran inside and pulled up the guitar tab for the song to learn how to play it, and she steeled herself to go over to Dylan's house.

The flock had been busy with something entirely different, though. Back before Alix and Dylan broke up, Nudge had started a conversation about a weird dream she had had, where Alix and Fang were siblings. As it turned out, everyone had had the same dream. The exact same dream, down to the letter.

Some digging and hacking into the labs uncovered that Alix and Fang were indeed twins, and Fang had grown immensely protective of her. When Dylan and her broke up, Fang was furious. As someone who hid his emotions as well, he could see the pain in Alix's eyes every now and then.

The entire flock was outside. It was the first nice spring day of the year, even though it was only February, and so they had food arranged on a picnic table. Dylan was still in the kitchen, so she crept around the house and began playing the song under the window as a way of an apology. When Dylan saw her, he slid out the kitchen window and dropped the four feet from the sill to the ground in front of her.

"Something came up," Dylan had said. "We can't get back together." Alix had no way of knowing that the flock were planning on destroying another ITEX branch and were going to be gone for the better part of a month.

"What came up?" she asked, trying to hide her disappointment. After thoroughly embarrassing herself by singing this song, she had really been hoping...

"I can't say," Dylan said. A spark of anger rose up in her.

"Always something you can't say!" she said, getting angry. "You know what, Dylan, never mind. You haven't changed at all, have you? I don't know why I bothered -" She turned and started leaving, but Dylan grabbed her arm.

"There are some things I can say," he said, looking down at her.

"Really? Like what?" she snapped.

"Like I still love you," he said. They had known each other for a year, and so Dylan decided it was finally alright for him to say it.

"Then tell me." A hint of pleading leaked into her tone, much to her horror, but she didn't hide it.

"I can't," Dylan said, with legitimate remorse in his eyes.

"Why not?" she asked, trying not to get angry with him again.

He hesitated, and then in a rush he said, "Because of your brother."

"What?" Alix asked, completely confused. "I only have one brother, and he's like... seven. What would he possibly have against you?"

"Not... him," Dylan said, taking in a shuddering breath. "Your twin."

"Uh, Dylan. I think I'd know if I had a twin, don't you?" Alix's mind was running on warp speed, and she searched her mind for anything involving her and a twin brother. The only thing she came up was one dream she had had almost a year ago, when someone who looked an awful lot like Fang had been her twin brother.

"It's..." Dylan started, hesitating.

"... Fang," Alix guessed, watching his face for a reaction.

"Yeah, how did you know?" Dylan asked, legitimate surprise spelled out across his face.

"A dream," she answered, and he grabbed her arm again and dragged her around the house to where the others were waiting.

"Hey Dylan! Where's the snack tray..." Dr. Martinez's daughter started, and then trailed off. "Oh, uh, hi Alix."

"She had the dream too," Dylan said, dragging Alix forward.

"What are you talking about?" Alix asked, glancing around.

"Really?" Max said, leaning forward across the table with interest. "Were we in the dream? Were we different at all?"

Alix hesitated. "Um, you were. You had wings, it was one of those weird flying dreams that everyone has... why?"

Angel snapped her jacket off and showed Alix her wings, fluttering the feathers slightly. "Because we've got wings," Angel answered, completely straight-faced as Alix fell over backwards into Dylan. "Do you speak with animals?"

"N-" Alix started, but then she remembered that summer night by the bon fire, when the animals had spoken to her. "... I think so."

"I see," Max said, her mouth twitching slightly. "Basically, the dream was real and something very peculiar is going on, and now that we're all caught up – "

A loud crack filled the air, the sound of an explosion. Someone screamed, and then Erasers swarmed the lawn.

Alix just heard Max murmur under her breath, "Don't these bastards know that it's rude to interrupt?" before she was thrown into a wild fight for her life.


	4. A Wish For Revenge

**Ok, if you're wondering, this isn't the style I'm going to tell the rest of the story in. BUT, if you are actually interested in this story please leave a review because I haven't gotten any feedback at all since restarting this and if no one's reading it, then I'm not going to bother writing it.**

**Basically, this is the last chapter I'm going to post until people let me know if they are/aren't reading it.**

As I'm sure you're starting to gather, Alix – and everyone, for that matter – was rather confused.

The attack from the Erasers seemed like an eternity to Alix, but honestly it was over in about two minutes from her perspective. She did manage to kill a couple of them, but she ended up unconscious with the rest of the flock and when she woke up, she was in a cage. Only Max, Iggy, Fang, Dylan, Nudge, Gazzy and Angel were in the room with her, because Razor, Karma and Aqua hadn't been at the house at the time.

She was the first one to wake up, and when she did a scientist was in the room. He explained to her how they had given her a second shot with new memories and then she had blown it, and she had a sinking feeling in her stomach.

"But now you know our trick, so we can't just try again or else you would know! We tried to give you a normal chance, you know," the scientist said, and left the room. He called back over his shoulder, "Enjoy your stay," and closed the door behind him.

As she sat there in the silence, with all the others still unconscious, she took some time to absorb that everything in her dream had been real, and that everything she thought she knew was fake. Her mother was not her mother, her baby brother wasn't her baby brother, none of it. And it wasn't just true for her, either.

It meant that Aqua, who had lost her memories, was back to square one... All of the memories she had been given were fake.

She had taken the life and the family away from Aqua, Karma and Razor. They were going to be alone now, fighting for their lives.

And the worst part? _It was all her fault._

Dylan woke up then, and glanced at her groggily through the cage bars. "They broke your guitar," he said apologetically.

Alix looked down at the little winged locket she had around her neck. "So this is the only thing I have in the world, now," she said quietly.

"Not true," Dylan said. "You have your home, your family..."

"No I don't, Dylan," she said, fighting off a wave of depression and panic. "The dream was real, it's all fake. I don't have a family, I'm alone."

"No," Dylan said, reaching his hands through the bars of his cage towards her. "You have me." He clinched his hand into a fist around the empty air, and when he opened it there was a stemless red rose in the palm of his hand. I reached out through my own bars hesitantly, and he put it into my hand.

The red leaked out of the rose, leaving behind a flawless snow-white blossom. I smiled sadly, remembering the rose he had left on my doorstep at Christmas.

"Beautiful," I said, looking up at him. "How did you do that?"

"Magic," he replied, with a huge dimpled smile stretching across his face. "Just like you."

When everyone else woke up, Alix couldn't help but apologize. "I'm so sorry."

"What for?" Dylan said, glancing at her with surprise.

"If I hadn't let my tongue slip, I wouldn't have messed up this second chance... you could would be free and flying around and happy, but now we're in dog cages. I should have stayed away..." Alix said, trailing off.

"It wasn't you," Max said, scolding Alix as though Alix was being completely ridiculous.

"It was! And now you're all scratched up by Eraser claws," Alix pointed to a gash above Dylan's eyebrow, which was still dripping blood into his eye.

"What's up with that anyway?" Iggy asked. "I thought they were terminated."

The conversation drifted away to whether or not Erasers were dead, and Alix just sighed to herself. Her apology had just been skimmed over. But she decided that it _was _her fault. You and I might know that this was a completely normal occurrence for the flock, but Alix didn't and she was completely shaken with guilt.

She decided that she had to get them out. The same scientist from before came into the room and the others went completely silent, staring at him. The intern who had relocated the flock was with him, standing awkwardly behind him.

"Alright," the scientist said, squinting up at the eight mutants in their cages. "Let's start with Maximum and Angel, the eldest and the youngest." The scientist looked at Angel again, and then said "Make sure we have an extra shot for the little thing, because I hear that it bites." Alix's heart broke and she felt horror welling up inside her. _No, not Angel. Not because of me._

The intern started climbing the ladder, but Alix manged to find her voice. "Wait, please," she said, her voice cracking a little.

The scientist paused. He had known what was going to happen. He had been _wanting _it to happen.

"Don't," Alix whispered. "Don't hurt them. They're here because I messed up, you know that and I know that so please, let them go."

"Ah," the scientist said, wearing a smirk on his face. "Don't be foolish. Then not only would we only have one to experiment on instead of eight, but we would be in danger. They would be wanting to break back in here to get you, don't you see? Your twin brother is in that cage, and your boyfriend in that one – they would be coming back for you, killing our Erasers and hurting our staff. That's just foolish...

"... as long as you're alive, they're going to keep looking for you." The scientist paused dramatically, and Alix knew the only way out of this.

She had to die.

"Then... me. Just me," Alix said. "Take my life, kill me, chop me into little pieces and just let them go. All of them, don't touch them, don't hurt them. Just let them go."

Alix felt their eyes on her, and saw Dylan's mouth working but no sound escaped his lips.

"So be it," the scientist said. "Unbolt their cages and escort them out. Kill the girl with this," he tossed a syringe to the intern. He had obviously been prepared, and knew what Alix was going to do. "and bring her to lab 241.I believe it's time we dissected one of these mutants, and discovered what really makes them tick." He turned and started walking for the door, then paused.

"Oh, and," the scientist said, "Shapeshift to have wings. We want to see how that worked out anatomically."

"No, no, no," Dylan said, his voice rough. "Don't. Please. You finally know what it is I was keeping from you, we can be together. Please, don't leave me again."

"Alix," Fang's voice came from below her, his voice threatening. "I swear if you do this, I will come back and kill you myself!"

"I'm sorry," she said, eyes filling with unfalling tears. Erasers came in and started dragging the others from their cages. The intern plucked a feather from Fang's wing as he was dragged away, and as they disappeared out the door, they were all yelling.

"ALIX!"

"TOUCH MY SISTER AND I'LL KICK ALL YOUR ASSES."

"I WILL BLOW THIS DANG JOINT OFF ITS HINGES SO HELP ME GODS..."

And then they were gone. Alix was alone with the very nervous-looking intern, holding a single black feather between his thumb and forefinger.

He moved the ladder towards Alix's cage so he could climb up and get her out, and while he did he did something odd with the syringe that the scientist had given him. Alix didn't know what he did with it and didn't much care, but for those of us on the outside looking in, I'll let you in on a secret: he changed the syringes.

He handed her the feather through the bars of the cage, and she shape-shifted with a false calm. The intern then opened the door, and she handed him her wrist, completely calm and still.

"Don't worry," the boy said, glancing up at her. He plunged the needle into her arm and shoved the stopper down on the syringe. She gasped, and her vision tunneled and turned black. Her breathing grew painful and slow, and she heard the roar of the blood in her ears go down to a whisper and then stop entirely.

Fang was beyond furious, and he was also confused and hurt. He glared at the Eraser's that had dragged him and the others out of the lab, and he tried to punch one in the face. The Eraser caught his hand easily and threw it to the side.

"She's dead," the Eraser said, his voice stony.

"No, she isn't," Fang denied fiercely.

"Alix!" Dylan yelled, struggling against the Eraser that held him. Max was biting and kicking, grumbling about the Erasers being new and improved.

Fang's vision was red with anger and he couldn't think straight.

Then it sank in. His sister was dead. A wave of denial washed over him and he decided that no, he was going to get her back. He was going to take care of her and never lose her again, because she was all he had.

He didn't have parents, he didn't have any other siblings, he didn't even really have Max anymore, not after how much they had fought.

"Alix," Angel whimpered, shocked and stunned.

The intern from before walked through the doors of the lab into the swarm of Erasers. He looked shaken, but there wasn't a sparkle of regret in his eyes and that made Fang hate him. The boy held out his closed fist, and when he opened it there was a locket in his palm. It was tiny and silver and had little wings on it.

"I gave that to her for Christmas," Dylan said, his voice broken. "She wouldn't have given it to anyone."

Dylan stopped struggling, and the Eraser holding him let him go. Dylan picked the necklace up delicately, and looked at it. "It wasn't ripped from her neck, the chain's unbroken," Dylan whispered. "It was taken from her when she couldn't do anything."

"The only time she would have been unable to do something would be if she was dead," Fang said, his emotions swirling around his chest.

"She's dead," the intern said. Fang tried to punch the boy, but Erasers got in the way. The boy went back into the building, along with the Erasers, and the doors locked behind them. Fang beat on the doors until his fists were bloody, and his mind emptied of all thoughts except for one.

_I will avenge her._


End file.
